Girl Power!

Doyenne inspiration is an all girl robotics competition held last weekend.  I have been working with the Johnston county female robotics team. The girls learned a lot about programming, building (and rebuilding) robots and most of all teamwork.  Our team was on the second place alliance, losing the last match by one point! Some of the teams had as many as 20 girls, we did ours with 6.  Small but mighty!

Our robot

Robot guts

I've been helping my son-in-law with an all girls robot team.  It has been a lot of fun.  Here's the inside workings of the robot.  It has lights, but no bells and whistles.

Robots everywhere

This weekend we were in Asheville for the FIRST robot regional competition.  The competition was like a huge sporting event in the UNC Asheville arena.

The robots had specific tasks they had to accomplish with points for each task.

They were built by student teams that work all year to design, program, build and drive the robots.

There were a lot of different designs.

It was amazing to hear an entire arena cheering on the smart kids!

First Robot Competition

The high school gym was packed with cheering teens, sponsors and parents as 33 teams competed in the FIRST Robotics competition. 

The students had to build the entire robot from scratch, no kits allowed.  

Then they had to program it to perform specific tasks.  Each ball it picked up and delivered, each gear it delivered was worth a few points.  Then it had to raise itself up to the platform for the most points of all.

To see the enthusiasm, committment and pride these kids showed was incredible.  Finally the "smart kids" get their day in the sun!